Energy Futures from the Social Market Economy to the Energiewende Stefan Cihan Aykut
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Energy futures from the social market economy to the Energiewende Stefan Cihan Aykut To cite this version: Stefan Cihan Aykut. Energy futures from the social market economy to the Energiewende: The politicization of West German energy debates, 1950-1990. Jenny Andersson; Egle Rindzevičiūtė. Forging the Future, Routledge, pp.63-91, 2015. hal-01276134 HAL Id: hal-01276134 https://hal-upec-upem.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01276134 Submitted on 18 Feb 2016 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution| 4.0 International License Please cite as : Stefan C. Aykut (2015), “Energy futures from the social market economy to the Energiewende: The politicization of West German energy debates, 1950-1990”, in: Jenny Andersson, Egle Rindzevičiūtė, The Struggle for the Long Term in Transnational Science and Politics: Forging the Future, Routledge, Cultural History Series, 93-144 (to be published). Abstract: The chapter tells the story of energy transformation (Energiewende) scenarios in West Germany. Based on abandonment of nuclear energy and its replacement by energy savings and renewable energy sources, as well as transformation of energy systems from centralized to decentralized production, transition scenarios profoundly influenced and transformed the German energy debate, while at the same time losing some of their more radical implications in the process of institutionalization in official expertise. By retracing this history, the chapter shows how energy forecasting in post-war Germany was embedded in political struggles over energy and economic policy, and how the use of scenarios by the environmental movement led to a politicization and pluralization of energy futures. 1/27/2015 6244-0555-003.docx 93 Chapter 3 Energy Futures from the Social Market Economy to the Energiewende The Politicization of West German Energy Debates, 1950– 1990 Stefan Cihan Aykut This chapter analyzes the history of energy forecasts and scenarios in West Germany in the decades 1950–1990. It shows that forecasting techniques were crucial in structuring the emerging field of energy policy and analyzes them as sociotechnical objects that defined boundaries between scientific and political questions in German energy discourse. The first part of the chapter analyzes how forecasting techniques were introduced into energy debates at the global level and later in national policy-making. I also point to some scholarly debates about how to characterize the functions and effects of such techniques. The second part of the chapter deals with the role of energy forecasts from the late 1950s to the beginning of the 1970s. In this period, characterized by steady economic growth in what has been called the German “Wirtschaftswunder” (“economic miracle”), energy modeling techniques were concentrated in the hands a few economic research institutes, energy utilities and state administrations, and forecasts were mainly used as instruments directly intended for the policy process.1 They represented an attempt to create forms of foreseeability about evolutions in the energy field, and reflected a general trend to the “rationalization of politics.” But forecasts were also part of a negotiation game that took place between government and energy utilities, as well as between 1/27/2015 6244-0555-003.docx 94 different groups within government, over public investments in energy technologies, energy infrastructure and power plants. In fact, forecasting reenacted a post-war social contract based on steady economic growth and associated energy demand, and helped to forge a political compromise on energy policy comprising a simultaneous commitment to the dominant free- market ideology and to the protection of the domestic coal sector. Forecasts also encapsulated optimistic visions about the future potential of nuclear energy, constituting the cornerstone of an emerging “economy of techno-scientific promise.”2 The role of forecasting changed, however, by the end of the 1970s. The third part of the chapter discusses the emergence of energy turnaround (Energiewende)3 scenarios in West Germany. These scenarios appeared in the context of increasing controversies over energy policy after the two oil crises (1973 and 1979), but also in a situation of growing civil society resistance against nuclear energy. In other words, by the early 1980s, some of the cornerstones of post-war energy consensus in Germany crumbled. Elaborated by research institutes with close links to the anti-nuclear movement, energy turnaround scenarios constituted strategic devices in these controversies, and they used the scenario technique specifically in order to allow for the representation of contrasting alternative energy futures, thereby re-politicizing the energy debate. In particular, the chapter analyzes the first transition scenario elaborated by the newly founded Öko-Institut (Ecological Institute), in 1980, and shows how this scenario questioned, challenged and destabilized central elements of the post-war consensus. The fourth part of the chapter looks at how the scenario technique was used in two German parliamentary commissions (Enquetekommission), in 1979–1980, and in 1987–1990. These commissions were organized at two very particular moments in time, in which fundamental understandings of energy policy were “unsettled”4 and energy futures hotly 1/27/2015 6244-0555-003.docx 95 debated. The first commission was created after the Three Miles Island accident, the second one after the Chernobyl catastrophe and first public alerts in West Germany about an imminent “climate catastrophe.” In the context of these two commissions, scenario methodology played a key role in the process of negotiating an energy future for West Germany. Scenarios were used to foster consensual recommendations about long-term goals and short-term actions, and allowed the commissions to present different conflicting future visions compatible with these goals. The commissions thus avoided taking an explicit stance in the controversy on nuclear energy, and helped alternative energy scenarios that had emerged out of the radical environmental debate of the 1970s to become accepted and included into official expertise. Scenarios of energy futures were also central, I propose, in a redrawing of boundaries between what should be considered as a “scientific” representation of the future, in other words one that could be delegated to experts— and what should be regarded as open for political discussion in the energy field.5 In the concluding part, I point to how this analysis helps to understand in later developments, when the Energiewende became official government policy after 1998 (when a coalition government between Social Democrats and Greens decided to phase out nuclear and engage an energy transition) and 2011 (the re-affirmation of the energy transition by a liberal- conservative government after the Fukushima accident). Forecasting Techniques and Energy Policy: From the Global to the National Level The role of forecasting techniques changed dramatically in the decades from the 1950s to the 1980s that are the focus of this chapter. “The future” became an object of study in the 1950s and 1/27/2015 6244-0555-003.docx 96 1960s in a majority of industrialized countries. The first forecasting studies originated at the American RAND Corporation in a context of Cold War nuclear confrontation,6 whereas French planning circles developed and theorized “strategic forecasting” or “la prospective” as a method to rationalize decision-making and investment decisions for big industrial projects in a quickly changing sociotechnical environment.7 Whereas this first line of forecasting techniques were based on a belief in science and the “knowability” of the future,8 growing environmental consciousness, debates about possible Limits to Growth9 and the emancipatory impetus of the peace, civil rights and environmental movements inspired new approaches in the 1970s, including “doomsday scenarios” aiming to raise consciousness of the unsustainability of current lifestyles and production and consumption patterns,10 the use of the scenario technique to represent alternative futures,11 and participatory future-making practices.12 Forecasting and scenario techniques were used extensively in the energy field throughout the analyzed period. The first global estimations of future energy demand are even older. They originated from the meetings of the World Power Conferences (the precursor of the World Energy Council), and were issued already in the 1920s. Several decades later, global studies like IIASA’s Energy in a Finite World13 modeled the global energy system and sketched possible future developments in energy consumption and production as a response to growing worries about limited energy resources.14 Since the 1990s, the International Energy Agency, an international organization founded in 1973 after the first oil crisis, has released annual forecasts called World Energy Outlook that constitute the global reference point for